It's a brave new world of travel, my friends. Years ago, Thailand's tourist establishments were barely aware of wireless internet. Now it's sprung up all over the place, often times, offered intentionally free.

The beach bungalow establishment that currently provides me shelter (Paradise Cottage) provides free wifi access to the old ISH (information super highway). As a result, vacationers' risky netbook usage on electronics-incompatible sand has increased exponentially. The benefits of free wifi are obvious, however, the down side of free internet access is a room full of anti-social people with heads buried in their laptops writing to friends at home instead of meeting new friends next to them. It seems every second person has a netbook now and with it, the face of backpacking has forever been altered.

Lucky for me though, this wifi access to the ISH has allowed me to extend my beach vacation another month, enabling me to mix pleasure with business by a ratio erring largely on the side of pleasure.

EDIT: after several requests, I decided to put the phone number and email directly here: